While the best methods for burning calories and gaining muscle are things like sprinting and lifting weights, those aren’t necessarily great for your body. Injuries while sprinting or lifting weights are incredibly common, hence why they are considered high-impact exercises, they have a high-impact on your body. Now, we aren’t saying not to do these exercises, just that you should give your body a break once and a while by doing some good, low-impact exercises. You can still burn calories while doing these exercises. With that being said, here are 4 examples of good, low-impact exercises.
Elliptical Training
One of the best low-impact exercisesout there is elliptical training. There are a few reasons why this is the case. Firstly, ellipticals put very little strain on your muscles and bones. Even though using an elliptical may seem similar to running or using a treadmill, either of those will put far more strain on your body than using an elliptical will. Secondly, elliptical training still burns quite a few calories. Lastly, elliptical training can be combined with other exercises. Many people use elliptical training in conjunction with high-impact exercises like weightlifting to keep their body loose.
Cycling
Cycling burns almost as many calories as running (an hour of running will burn in the neighborhood of 1,000 calories, while a similar amount of cycling will burn around 800 or so). However, whereas running is very hard on your knees and your joints, cycling isn’t anywhere near as bad. So, you burn the same number of calories, while having minimal impact on your body and thus minimal chance of injury. While cycling does have some downsides, such as having a high initial cost if you don’t own a bike and requiring you to know to ride a bike, it is otherwise a great low-impact exercise.
Yoga
You probably could have guessed that Yoga would appear on this list the moment that you read the title. There really isn’t a whole lot to say when it comes to yoga since you likely already know everything that you need to know. Yoga doesn’t put any undue strain your body, while still letting you burn a lot of calories.
Swimming And Water Exercises
Swimming, or really any water-based exercise, are great low-impact exercises that still lets you burn a ton of calories. There is a reason why people often recommend swimming or other water-based exercises to seniors, and it is because they have minimal impact on the body.